Blurred Around the Edges
by goddessa39
Summary: For the Slayer, it is all too easy to get lost...


**Blurred Around the Edges**

Buffy and co. do not belong to me.

Buffy/Angel

_For Buffy, it is easy to get lost._

* * *

_Everything's so blurry  
and everyone's so fake  
and everybody's empty  
and everything is so messed up  
pre-occupied without you  
I cannot live at all  
My whole world surrounds you  
I stumble then I crawl_

-**Blurry** by _Puddle of Mudd_

* * *

It is only too simple to lose herself nowadays, her mind wandering out the window as if feet carry her out into the empty streets. The sunlit mornings and afternoons transform into the dark nights when the cold corpses come out to play in the search for blood; and still it is all time that blends together and never stops. Shivering, the slayer pulls up her blonde tangles. Even a pretty hair-do with a brush that leaves it soft and glowing can't cheer her up. And the ash, grey and dry with death and decay just clogs up her nose, ruins her old clothes, and causes her eyes to water with the tears she fears to shed.

At night when she is stalking her prey, moving along in their selfish desire to beleive themselves the top of the food chain, the ash of bodies turn to dust and when her eyes water she almost feels those emotions that have been closed to her-even the edge of the pain cannot take over the emptiness left inside of her. Loneliness has become her, and she is always alone.

Sometimes, when the yellow glowing moon begins to fall away and the sun is a slow few hours from rushing back into the sky, she lays in bed, the covers bunched underneath her own fleshy husk or sometimes wrapped around her as if a cloud that protects her from the world. But it does not really shield her or save her. Buffy never gets any sleep anymore, or if she does it is so blended into this waking nightmare that she cannot tell the difference. The walls seem thin even in the well-made houses to Slayer senses and the soft snoring of her rebelling sister and the animals yowling in the darkness are practically orange visible lines linking away from her, holding her down.

Exhausted, she steps softly down the stairs in the mornings with quiet grace, her body rocking backward and forwards with each step as if in a trance, and makes her little sister, green and glowing and so young still, pancakes or eggs, or just sets aside the milk and a bowl next to two or three different choices. Dark circles have taken up residence beneath her eyes and those lids, thin and strong and pale where she was once glowing with life, close gently over her jaded soul. Nobody looks at her anymore as a person, just a figure,_ a thing_, and the truth is the Slayer is dying atop the mouth of hell yet again and has not yet managed to summon the urge to care. She's so weak now, brittle where strength had once defined her. Like a starfish, she is losing each of her legs and falling to pieces, discarded when she used to be beautiful and glorified in...

She forgets, sometimes, where she is. Her sleepless mind will blur out the edges of her vision and when she wakes and goes to the restroom the warm water beats against her skin, reddening the pigment and skinning it closer to her blood stream. It is almost as if she can pretend... Then at night, when the rain scatters the alley cats to a warm, safe harbor, she will stand out at her bitter window, open it with a small flick, and take it all into herself, breathe in the cool night air and taste the wet mint that is the closest thing to a garden she will ever bring herself to grow; a little water and no care and the smell can almost make her forget the dryness of her throat and the cold tingling on her tongue that has rendered her tastebuds useless. On patrol, Buffy stands still out in the middle of the night, looking up at the dark clouds that seem to mock her pain. There are those who beleives the stars are gods, or loved ones passed on. She doesn't believe it.

The edges blur and her body goes numb and her mind does crazy things. _("Love makes you do the wacky.")_ Eyes closed to the cold of reality, her body seems to hum and she dreams, feels as if she is still at peace, dead, with the choirs of angels and Mommy and everyone else safe and happy. _Up There_, she thinks, _I was done, finished_. Now she bleeds and flinches at bright lights, gets dizzy at the lightest movements. She is shutting down and yet no one notices. If she were well, the Slayer would not know what to do to get help, but would it be worth it? Buffy doesn't know.

Her arms are wrapped around her body, offering only the illusion of comfort, but her body shivers because her skin prickles with chill and she feels so tired and alone and helpless to do anything else. Standing in the Magic Box, or maybe at Xander's house where he can curl up with his own ex-murderess demon and play house, the stillness of the world will enrapture her, and arms, big and cool and strong, will pull her into a great warm place her soul can almost remember.

And then someone will stand up and speak, and it is as if some enemy wolf has opened its jaw and howled a challenge she is not willing or ready to accept.

It happens daily, hourly, every second and the Slayer feels as if she is losing her nerve. "Every Slayer has a death wish," Spike had once told her. But he had been bluffing, trying to get to her. And he'll never know how right that bluff was. She wanted to die, to be physically dead and happy and at peace and done... her knuckles hurt again and she rubs them slowly on the edge of her dark black jacket when no newbie vampires, no wandering fledglings, are willing to come out and play, able to suffer her brokenness.

Eventually, everyone breaks. Unfortunately for the world, the Slayer was broken long ago. As the world goes to hell, slowly, slowly, inch by freaking inch, her soul is breaking free and the fire is prepared to pull her into its retched heat. And yet... and yet she is stuck on this earthly body, alone in the world even where blood kin and friend kin walk and talk and laugh and make more footprints in the cruel world.

"Angel." She looks up and meets familiar eyes with her own.

Cool arms, strong and somehow soft at the same time pull her tired body into the warmth and Love surrounds her, Love in feeling and action and the acceptance she has not felt since... then. Taking in a deep breath, she smells him, takes in his scent. Sandalwood, and something earthy with the perfect male odor that makes her mind go _'Angel, Angel, Angel'_ over and over again moves into her body and her soul feels as if it is balmed with the mint growing outside her window. Without even trying, she tastes him, tongue across cheek and chest and inside of him where his blood mixes into her, where his heart beats or not-beats beside her own, where his strength and soul combine and become one with Buffy's own.

Her mind has faded away now, been soothed passed the caring, and the world takes on a blur, like looking through a pair of beer goggles and yet still knowing what the truth of the world is. Warmth envelopes her, a comforting warmth. Buffy grins as her eyes slowly slip closed, life running through her battered being once again and her soul reaches out, out and into the world as her body once rose from six feet under ground to find herself at her own grave.

And so, she dreams of the Beyond.

She's too thin still, and her small fingers dance gracefully across pale skin and sweat and the emotion that envelopes her reminds her that she was a real girl in another life. Outside, the rain falls to the ground in a gentle pitter-patter, hitting old dirt to the floor and washing the muck away. She is back now, back to the night filled with bliss and the blush of true love, back to the once-upon-a-time where half a day was spent in the perfect yum.

For Buffy, it is all to easy to get lost. And in the end, all she can think is his name like a prayer falling from her pink rosebud lips that have grown pale in the cold world. In the end, he'll always be able to find her.

* * *

**END**. This one-shot was minute-made and angsty as usual. It is up to you if it ended on a happy ending, tragic ending, or sort of positive ending, etc. Review and tell me what you think.


End file.
